Notwithstanding this seeming limitation of the book, “Twice Born Men”
is a splendid portrayal of the one more or less uniform type of the
anti-social individual. We are especially impressed with the fact that
the materials for this book were secured almost within a stone’s throw
of the aristocratic West End of London. It is almost inconceivable that
a cultured community would permit the continuance of such a festering
sore at its very heels. Fortunately few American cities have such
dangerous proximity of the more healthful districts to its insanitary
cesspools. May we not take hope from the fact that with a wider
separation between the Avenue and the congested district the American
cities are insisting upon the extermination of the latter? Their
darkness is being expelled by the substitution of social settlements
for saloons, and parks and playgrounds for penny-ante and gambling dens.
No reader of “Twice Born Men” can fail to have his faith quickened in
the possibilities of human reclamation. Wide experience may discover
not only one but many motives that will prompt the transformation of
different sorts of men. Nevertheless it gives a renewed courage to
feel that when there has been apparent failure all along the line,
and when all the resources of church and state have been ineffective
in preventing men from reaching the lowest dregs of humanity, there
remains the unusual and striking method of the Salvation Army in its
appeal to the deep-seated and imperishable instinct of religion.
F. E. L.
_Washington Strives for Inebriates Hospital._--The various citizens’
associations of Washington, D. C., will be asked to make a concerted
effort to induce Congress to establish a hospital for inebriates and
victims of the drug habit, to which persons can be sent for treatment
or be lawfully committed, so that they can be restrained from access to
either intoxicating liquors or injurious drugs. The board of trade and
chamber of commerce also will be urged to take up the matter.
The Washington Evening Star says editorially: “The need of a local
hospital as a place of special treatment for inebriates has long been
known and admitted in Washington. The present practice of confining
dipsomaniacs and drug victims in a penal institution is suggestive of a
bygone age. These unfortunates need treatment, judicious encouragement
and some measure of restraint. But what they do not need is punishment.
The workhouse is not the best place for alcoholic slaves, but the
District is under the necessity of sending them there.”
The Iowa legislature is considering a bill which provides that while
the inmates of the state prison and reformatory are at hard labor and
on good behavior, their wives and children under sixteen years of age
shall be paid fifty cents a day by the state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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